Uncanny

Usually when two people who are entertainment celebrities pass away at about the same time someone will invariably say, "There will be a third one soon. Death comes in threes."

Sometimes it does seem that way. While there are those who don't think there are coincidences, there are coincidences. What I don't think is a coincidence is the online NYT obituary placing of the photos of two women who have recently passed away. To me, they look alike, even down to their hair, which I think is where the resemblance starts.

The first image is of  Cecile Richards, former Planned Parenthood president who has passed away at 67. The second image is of Claire van Kampen, playwright and arranger of early music world who has passed away at 71.

Don't tell me there no resemblance.

As I've stated in a prior posting, the first thing I do when I sign on in the morning is check for overnight email, but also check who might have freshly passed away by calling up the online edition of the NYT.

I look online first despite the fact that a freshly delivered print edition has landed in the driveway. I know from experience that obits can show up online before they gain entry to the print edition pages. I commented on this is in a posting last year: The Dead Are Waiting.

I first saw Ms. Richards obit online a few days ago. It has yet to hit the print edition, while Ms. van Kampen's is in today's print edition, on page B11, without using the online head shot. Thus, the print readers will not see the juxtaposition of two deceased women who bear a strong resemblance to each other with their photos stacked in an online edition layout. Don't tell me the editor didn't plan it that way.

It can be fun to see what similarities might occur on the obit page. Sometimes it seems two Nobel winners, who you've likely never heard of, get a tribute obit on the same day. Obits for Nobel winners always make me feel terribly under-educated.

My own diploma awarded education stopped at high school. I did attend college—two in fact—but quickly made the decision that I felt that drinking beer, earning a pay check in an office job and being a regular at New York Ranger home games and the finish line at Aqueduct and Belmont racetracks was where I wanted to be. As the song goes, I did it my way.

Take a recent obit for J. Fraser Stoddart, 82, Who Built Machines out of Molecules. You know from the headline alone that this guy didn't spend his time drinking beer, agonizing over Ranger games, or tearing up or cashing tickets at Aqueduct and Belmont racetracks. He of course won a Nobel Prize.

And that thing about "machines out of molecules" makes me wonder if I'm going to understand anything about this guy's achievements. But here goes.

Mr. Stoddart received his Nobel prize in 2016 after he and his colleagues "figured out how to build molecules with physical bonds; these molecules became the building blocks for nanomachines." Okay, he's not making weapons from 3-D printers.

Mr. Stoddart was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and was raised on a farm. As a kid he was given a Meccano set, a model construction set popular in Britain at the time. Here, J. Fraser and myself have something in common. I played with wooden blocks and an Erector set, metal pieces that allowed you to build toy superstructures, like bridges and elevators.  So far it seems we had similar Christmas gifts.

He liked to take things apart and put them back together. And growing up on a farm to learned to repair farm equipment. He became a mechanic.

He attended Melville College, an elite boys school in Edinburgh. In his third year at Edinburgh University his professor  made him part of a research group, "looking into the structural complexities of acacia plant gums." Who knew that was a thing?

After graduating Edinburgh University in 1964 he earned a Ph.D. in two years. His life and mine diverged waaaay back there when he left the farm. And just think, we each got construction sets for Christmas.

In 1990 he was hired by the University of  Birmingham where he synthesized a rotaxane. Nothing in the obit tells us what a rotaxane is, but Google tells us:

"Rotaxanes have significant applications in creating molecular machines, switches, electronic devices, nanostructures, and drug delivery systems."

In there is a clue as to why this is important stuff: the delivery system for drugs sounds like a scientific advancement to help make us all get better from something, and therefore deserving of a Nobel prize. Congrats to Dr. Stoddart.

Okay, but did he ever see a Rod Gilbert slap shot go into the net, or pick an exacta from a race run over a sloppy track while drinking a beer?

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